[Linux-disciples] Dist-upgrade troubles

[Stephen R Laniel]

I just dist-upgraded my Ubuntu installation from Warty
Warthog to Hoary Hedgehog, and now I'm experiencing all
kinds of GNOME problems. Everything else seems to have
installed fine, but GNOME had some troubles. Now when gdm
launches and I'm logged in,

1) the desktop displays nothing -- no toolbars, menus, etc.;

2) the gnome-terminal window (from which I'm typing this) is
stuck in the upper-left-hand corner, is unresizeable, and
doesn't display the title bar;

3) the mouse has suddenly adopted the classical X behavior:
it focuses on whatever the mouse hovers over. This is
different than the behavior I had before;

4) my shortcut keys don't work.

Additionally, apt-show-versions reports for each of my
installed apps that there is 'no available version in
archive'. So that's ... um ... bad.

If I do an apt-get -f install, apt tells me that it would
basically have to remove every GNOME app. I think there's
some conflict between GNOME and Python, but I'm not sure.

Do I misunderstand something about the process? I thought
the whole point of dist-upgrade was that it would
intelligently resolve conflicts. It appears not to have done
so here.

So how do I dig myself out of this hole? I'd uninstall and
reinstall all my GNOME apps, but the 'no available version'
errors suggests to me that I have other, possibly deeper
(and possibly easier-to-resolve?) problems.

Any advice?

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/